Every story ever told had a reason to be passed on to someone else. That reason might have only mattered to the storyteller, but they felt the need to get it out. They felt some sort of nagging itch that needed to be scratched and they found a way to soothe it by telling the story. It could have been the story of something they experienced. It could have been something they were told about by the person or people who experienced it. It could have been something funny that they came up with while joking around about someone they knew. Whatever the case, they were inspired to come up with a story and compelled to share it with other people.
The reasons behind making movies have been even stranger. The money involved in movies turned the medium from being a complete artistic endeavor to being a quick way to make a little extra cash. The stories fell by the wayside in many cases because the studios, producers, directors, and writers became focused solely on the bottom line. They wanted money and they wanted thrills. They didn’t care about the satisfaction of the people walking away during the credits. The only thing that mattered was the money that the people spent to see the movies.
That led to many movies being greenlit for strange reasons. Convenience became one of the many inspirations to tell stories in movies. If there was a place or a thing available, it was going to be used. Costumes and props were shared between movies to cut down costs. Sets were reused. And, sometimes, someone simply had access to something and thought it should be used in a movie. All these weird things inspired a slew of movies that wouldn’t have otherwise existed.
Roger Corman was huge on doing this sort of thing in his heyday. One of his most famous films was The Little Shop of Horrors, a 1960 film about a man who grew a plant that was eating people. It was a movie that inspired a musical, which was then turned into a film in 1986, and an animated series in 1991. Nobody could have seen that level of success coming. It wasn’t a film that warranted a musical revival or the huge cult following that it garnered when the musical became a movie. That was never the intention. The intention was much more bizarre.
There were a few different stories surrounding why The Little Shop of Horrors was made. One story was that a bet had been made that Roger Corman couldn’t film a movie in two days. He took the bet and made the movie. Another story was that the rules for cast residuals were going to change at the beginning of the next year, meaning that Roger Corman would make less money, so he threw together one last film before that ruling came into effect. The other story was that Corman simply wanted to use the set from A Bucket of Blood one more time while he had it. The true story didn’t matter. They were all strange and would have been an unexpected inspiration for a story.
Most writers have more time to come up with a story, though. That was the case with Charlie Kaufman when he was tasked with writing an adaptation of The Orchid Thief, a non-fiction book by Susan Orlean. He was having trouble coming up with a good way to crack the story. It was taking longer than he had expected. When he got out of the writer’s block, though, he came up with an inventive adaptation that nobody could have expected. He came up with Adaptation.
The thing about Adaptation. was that it was an adaptation of The Orchid Thief while not being an adaptation of the book at all. The people written about in the book were there, and the book was a part of the story, but the story wasn’t the book. The story of Adaptation. was about Charlie Kaufman struggling to write an adaptation of The Orchid Thief while interacting with the people written about in the book. He created an entirely new story about his adaptation because he had reached a point where he didn’t know what to write. Adaptation. was inspired by writer’s block.
Trying to write through writer’s block can be a lot like writing on a short deadline. Or putting a movie together on a short deadline. It can lead to something messy. However, someone could always go back to something they wrote during writer’s block and fix it up if there wasn’t a deadline. With deadlines, that could become an impossible feat and the movie could quickly turn into a mess. All because someone wanted to simply capitalize on something to turn a quick profit.
That was what happened with Tammy and the T-Rex. Tammy (Denise Richards) was a high school cheerleader in love with Michael (Paul Walker), one of the jocks. Her ex-boyfriend Billy (George Pilgrim) was a jealous gang leader trying to break them apart. He kidnapped Michael and left him in a wildlife sanctuary where he was mauled by a lion and left in a coma. Evil scientist Dr. Wachenstein (Terry Kiser) faked Michael’s death and stole him from the hospital to put his brain into an animatronic T-rex. Then Michael went on a rampage, hunting down the gang members and scientists who led to this situation.
Tammy and the T-Rex was a mess of a movie, and it could all be traced back to the writing. That made sense. It was written, cast, and filmed over the course of three weeks. There was a man with an animatronic T-Rex that he was moving to Texas. He approached Stewart Raffill with the T-Rex and said that they should make a movie with it before it got moved. He didn’t have a story, so they speedily came up with something to film before it went to Texas. The story was only thrown together to capitalize on the availability of the animatronic T-Rex.
The Little Shop of Horrors and Tammy and the T-Rex could be comparable in terms of timing. Each movie was thrown together in a matter of days. The difference was in preparation. The Little Shop of Horrors was (possibly) inspired by a bet that the movie couldn’t be filmed in a two-day period. That didn’t mean that a script couldn’t be worked out beforehand. Mind you, even if it was done beforehand, it was very much the same story told in A Bucket of Blood, the previous Corman movie. Tammy and the T-Rex didn’t base the story on the director’s previous film, though. It tried to tell a semi-original story, which made it all that much easier to fumble on a condensed timeframe. A good story would require writing and rewriting and rewriting and so on and so forth. Tammy and the T-Rex didn’t have time for that. Everything had to be done quickly. And that hurt the writing process.
There have always been movies inspired by strange things. Something, like an animatronic T-Rex, might have only been available for a small amount of time and the filmmakers wanted to use it in their movie. There could have been a bet about how short a time a feature film could be made. A writer could have written their way out of writer’s block. Anything could have inspired a movie. That didn’t mean that every movie inspired in a strange way was good.
Every story had a reason to be told. It could have been personal, or it could have had some outside influence. Either way, the storyteller had reason to tell the story. They were compelled to. They needed to share it with other people. That fire that burned inside every storyteller was the reason that every movie was made. They found something that they wanted to show to audiences and they made it happen. It didn’t matter what brought the story about. They told it. And it led to every movie, good or bad.
Now let’s toss some notes in here:
- Stewart Raffill directed three other movies featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies. They were Mac and Me (week 125), The Ice Pirates (week 128), and Mannequin Two: On the Move (week 378).
- Tammy and the T-Rex was the third Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Paul Walker, who was in Monster in the Closet (week 55) and Timeline (week 222).
- George ‘Buck’ Flower and J. Jay Saunders returned in Tammy and the T-Rex after appearing in Mac and Me (week 125).
- Tammy and the T-Rex was Ken Carpenter’s second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance after Elves (week 106).
- Ellen Dubin returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Tammy and the T-Rex after being featured in Dead Before Dawn 3D (week 149).
- Finally, Mannequin Two: On the Move (week 378) featured two actors from Tammy and the T-Rex. They were John Edmondson and Terry Kiser.
- Have you seen Tammy and the T-Rex? What did you think of it? Do you prefer the theatrical cut or the newly restored gore cut? What other movies can you think of that had strange inspirations? Tell me your thoughts on Twitter or in the comments.
- If there’s a movie that you think would fit perfectly into the Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know about it. Find me in the comments or on Twitter and I’ll take your suggestions into consideration when I start the next chunk of the schedule.
- Hop on over to Sunday “Bad” Movies on Instagram for more Sunday “Bad” Movies fun.
- Last but not least, I should let you know what I’ll be covering next. Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for her performance in The Blind Side. That same year, she won a Razzie. I’ll be taking a look at that movie and writing a little something about it. That’s right. All About Steve is coming up next week. I’ll see you then.
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